


Man With a Plan (And No Clue)

by flyingfoxtopus



Series: Domesticated Foxes [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Is In Love, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, One Shot, Steve is clueless, Unrequited Love, stucky fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-22 21:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21083303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingfoxtopus/pseuds/flyingfoxtopus
Summary: Steve and Bucky have been friends for years. Best friends. Bucky would walk through fire for Steve. He stayed in this damn war for the punk. He could have gone home and lived a nice cushy life as an injured GI.... Not as injured as he should have been, but he's trying to ignore that mystery.And Bucky is glad that Steve finally found a girl who realises how great he is. Really. It's great. He couldn't be happier. But does Steve really need to have revelations about how great Peggy is at three in the morning right before a mission?





	Man With a Plan (And No Clue)

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of the Domesticated Foxes Universe, but you definitely don't have to read any of that for this to make sense. You should. The whole series is great. But if you just want to watch the boys pine, this is still the place for you.

Steve lay perfectly still. He still wasn’t used to the way his mind worked since the serum. You would think after more than a year he would be. Every now and then though it surprised him. Like right now. He should be asleep. Instead his mind was mapping the world around him. Connecting people and ideas. Organising everything into a neat web.  
  
Simple things at first. Linking Bucky and the word home. That wasn’t news. Bucky had been his home since before they had lived together.  
  
Tying Colonel Philips to leadership. Steve envied the way the gruff man could take control of any situation. His calm composure in any situation was what Steve tried to emulate in his own command. Nothing was ever a surprise. No matter how bad things got everything was going exactly to plan. It unnerved the enemy.  
  
Then mind had drawn a bright shining line between Peggy Carter and the feeling of _love_. It was obvious now. He thought about her all the time. He needed to make her smile like he needed to breathe. Both of which were much easier in this body. Peggy lit up like a firework when he spun her around the air plane hangar. She was always waiting when they got back to base, and he always looked for her. She was the person he wanted to tell everything to and the one he wanted next to him when he was it of his depth.  
  
This was huge. He, Steven Grant Rogers, disaster at all things female, was in love. With a girl he had actually talked to and everything. Done more than talk with. He had done everything with Peggy. He wanted to keep doing everything with Peggy.  
  
Wanted to take her back to the states with him. Move her into the apartment across from Bucky and start a family. The Rogers and Barnes kids would grow up thick as thieves. Just like he and Bucky had.  
  
Although he was a captain now. He could probably do better than a stuffy little two bedroom walk up. He and Bucky would just have to look around when they got back. Find better apartments. Maybe he would let Steve front him the money for a garage. There was one on Union street with two apartments over it. And a park down the street for the kids. That would be perfect.  
  
He needed to tell someone. He opened his eye on the dark room. No light made it past the blackout curtains. It should feel like opening his eyes inside a bag. Thanks to his newly enhanced senses. Steve could just make out the basic shapes that made up the room’s contents. A lumpy mound occupied the bed across from him. The blankets rising slowly and rhythmically. “Buck. Hey. Bucky.”  
  
“What?” Bucky grumbled burying himself deeper in his blankets. It was cold. It was dark. His alarm hadn’t gone off. He was not getting up.  
  
“I think I’m in love.” Steve said, flicking on the light between their beds. He was still amazed by the very idea.  
  
“What time is it?” Maybe Steve was doing that thing where he woke up before the alarm and turned it off, so they didn’t have to wake up to its annoying ringing.  
  
Steve glanced at the little brass alarm clock by the lamp. “0335.”  
  
That was a no on the Steve being a good friend front then. Bucky took a deep breath and pushed the covers down. He was not going to throttle Captain America. It wasn’t worth being hauled up on treason charges. Sometimes Stevie needed things explained to him nice and slow. “What time is our rally call at the airstrip?”  
  
“0500.” Steve wasn’t entirely sure why Bucky wasn’t up and dancing. Didn’t he understand how big this was. This was their future. They were _both_ going to have beautiful wives and children and a future.  
  
“Which means I have just over an hour to get all the fucking sleep I am going to get until we are back on this side of the line.” Bucky glared across the space between their beds. Steve knew he didn’t sleep well in the field. He was always too on edge.  
  
“So, unless you’re waking me up to tell me that you’re in love with me, I’m going back to bed. And if you are waking me up to tell me you’re in love with me. I would prefer you do it in an hour with the best fucking coffee you can find in this dump.” Not that that would be better for anyone than the alternative. No. Steve was better off in love with Peggy. The two of them would be very happy together for the rest of their lives. And Bucky would find a wife that didn’t make him miserable. Probably a pretty little blonde, or someone with more fight than sense. No one would read anything into that.  
  
“No, you jerk. I’m in love with Peggy.” Steve came out of his fog of joy long enough to notice that there was a voice missing from this conversation. Normally when he woke Bucky up in the middle of the night with an idea, they were interrupted by Monty telling them to sod off. The ‘officers’ quarters’ of their little team’s accommodations weren’t always the most restful place. All though given that Steve could hear Dum Dum snoring in the next room through the wall he wasn’t sure the other guys had it any better. “Where’s Falsworth?”  
  
“You gave him leave until rally tomorrow. He said he was going out with some friends and would probably crash there.” Bucky rubbed his face. It looked like he wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. “He asked me if I wanted to go too. I said no. A decision I am regretting right now since I would probably have gotten more sleep there.”  
  
“Right.” Steve nodded thoughtfully. He remembered that. It had been an aside over dinner. He didn’t normally worry too much about what the team did when they were on base. They were all good guys. As long as they got where they needed to be when they needed to be there, Steve didn’t see any reason to control their every action.  
  
This was good. It meant he could have this conversation with unnecessary teasing. None of the others had known him before he was as they put it an ‘Adonis’. They didn’t understand that under all this he was a looser who had never even managed to ask a girl to dance. He wouldn’t even have had a first kiss without Bucky. Thank goodness he had Bucky. “So, what do you think I should do?”  
  
“About the leave?” Bucky groaned dropping his pillow on his face to block out the light. Treason charges were starting to look like a small price to pay. That wasn’t fair to Steve. Steve was his best friend and he had no idea that this might be a sensitive topic for Bucky.  
  
“About Peggy.” Steve leaned across the gap and punched Bucky’s shoulder. He was being irritating on purpose now. “I should tell her right? I should go to her. I should ask her to marry me.”  
  
Yes. He should marry the pretty girl and have pretty babies with big blue eyes and auburn curls. Steve was his best friend. Peggy was great. She would take care of his little punk… big punk. He should be happy for him. Even if this whole love revelation was uncomfortable. “Yeah. Sure. That sounds like a great plan. Let me just wake the others up and we’ll go.”  
  
“Why would you wake the others up?” Steve hadn’t really considered how the proposal would work. But he hadn’t pictured a big crowd.  
  
Bucky stretched and set his feet on the cold floor. “So we can all laugh when she kicks your ass for waking her up. You know she had to be at the field before we do so she can brief us, right?”  
  
“Yeah but…” But he had just figured this out and was having a hard time not shouting it from the roof tops. And Peggy had to know too.  
  
“God damn it. She’s so good with you sometimes I forget you have no fucking experience talking to girls.” Bucky flopped back on the rickety bed. He’d never thought this day would come. He was supposed to be the one to look after Steve for the rest of his life. There had been a plan. Then this damn war had come along and ruined everything. There were only a few things left he could still do for his boy. This was it, making sure he didn’t ruin things with the first girl to ever realise how great he was. “Sit with it for a bit. Dames like to make a fuss about this sort of thing. So, make it special. Find moment and then tell her like it’s the most amazing thing in the world. Like this is better than breaking enigma. Get down on one knee and tell her ‘xactly how she makes you feel. En’ get a ring first. You’re the man with a plan. At least pretend to be prepared.”  
  
“Right. Plan. I can do this. Sweet mother of God. This is more amazing than breaking enigma. I’m in love Buck. And I think she loves me back.”  
  
Bucky scrubbed at the stubble coming in on his chin. She definitely loved him. Otherwise Bucky would have seen her off before she could blink. “She’d be an idiot not to. And our Pegs ain’t no idiot.”  
  
“Awwe Buck. I think you just said something nice about me.” Steve teased. He knew Bucky had his back on this. Once they finished this mission the two of them would go ring shopping. With Bucky’s help he should be able to find something nice.  
  
“Yeah well, I’m obviously ‘bout to drop from exhaustion because _someone_ won’t let me sleep.” He threw his pillow at Steve. He couldn’t be upset. Not really. Not when Steve was so happy. He would walk through hell with Steve… again. Then he would plaster a smile on his face and help him pick out the perfect ring for the perfect girl.  
  
Steve snatched it out of the air and popped it onto his own bed. “I’m keeping this.”  
  
“Come on. That’s my good fucking pillow. I had to fight a god damn Marine for that. It’s got real feathers and everything.” Bucky growled. He had gotten a black eye for that pillow. As Steve knew, since he had been the one to clean Bucky up after. It had looked worse than it actually was. He had been able to see out of it again in a couple of hours and the bruise had cleared up completely in two days. Still it had hurt.  
  
Steve fluffed the pillow and lay back. The future looked bright. “Didn’t your ma used to tell you not to throw your toys away or someone else might take them.”  
  
“Oh, fuck you.” Bucky launched himself at Steve’s bed wrestling with the larger man to reclaim his pillow. It was a loosing fight from the beginning. Bucky used to be able to manhandle Steve around no problem. Now Steve was bigger, and stronger, and he had to struggle to hold his own. Steve got him in a headlock inside of a minute.  
  
“Hey Buck?” Steve panted, holding firm as Bucky tried to wiggle his way free.  
  
Bucky growled and arched his back trying to break the hold. “Yeah Stevie?”  
  
Steve dumped him unceremoniously off the bed and whipped the contested pillow at his head. “Get back to bed. Don’t you know we have to be up early?”  
  
“I think I liked you better with asthma.” Bucky rubbed the spot where he had hit the floor and dragged himself back to his bed. He wasn’t going to lose his Stevie. Not the parts he was allowed to have anyway. And Steve would have a long happy life. Bucky had to be okay with that. It was more than he had been able to hope for before all this shit happened.  
  
*****  
  
When Bucky’s alarm clock went of an hour later, he found a steaming cup of coffee waiting for him. It was crap. Gritty and with the consistency of sludge. It tasted like mud and used socks. It was the best damn cup of coffee he’d ever had.


End file.
